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Time to Book Your Summer Vacation??

Ocean City, MD, is FlipKey's most popular vacation-rental destination in the U.S. for summer 2014 at the moment. If January seems early to book a summer vacation, think again!

(Richard Gunion/Dreamstime
)

I am a worrier. There's a little voice in my head that whispers sweet nothings like, "Who is going to want to read America's Most Awesome Boardwalks?" and "What if nobody votes for America's Coolest Small Town this year?" And I'm happy to report that my "worry voice" is almost always wrong. (In fact, I sometimes tell it to shut up.)

But when that little voice says, "Yikes! Summer is only five months away and you haven't booked your vacation yet??" it is actually spot on. Our friends over at FlipKey gave us a surprising heads-up the other day: Vacation rentals for June, July, and August 2014 are already filling up.

According to FlipKey (a vacation rental marketplace owned by TripAdvisor that has more than 240,000 listings in more than 12,000 locations worldwide), more than 90,000 rental requests have been made on properties for summer 2014. A full 30 percent of FlipKey's properties have received at least one summer 2014 request.

While I'd never suggest that this news—or anything we report here—put you in a panic, I will suggest that now is an excellent time to start browsing vacation rentals and other summer options. We'll do our part by sharing more early-bird advice on summer 2014 here over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, it might interest you to know that FlipKey's three most popular summer 2014 vacation spots so far are: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Ocean City, MD; and Myrtle Beach, SC. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to start my summer planning right about now…

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